The Best I Know
by Quicksilver Ink
Summary: An old family recipe stirs up fond memories for both Phoenix and Edgeworth. Baking and fluff.


This was written as a fill for the Phoenix Wright Kink Meme. Prompt was: "Phoenix bakes - and he's good at it. So he bakes something for Edgeworth. Fluff, or fluff and smut." I went the pure fluff route, unless graphic depictions of baking count as smut. Was intended to be P/E romance, but came out as pure friendship fluff because Edgey was too shy.

Vague spoilers for AAI.

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><p>Phoenix was setting his ingredients out on the counter when he got the call from Gumshoe.<p>

"I checked, and Mr. Edgeworth should be in his office all afternoon today," the detective reported after the standard greetings had been exchanged. "He'll be in court tomorrow, though, and who knows how long that will take. So if you wanted to bring something over... well, today's your best bet."

"I figured. Thanks," Phoenix said, cradling the phone between ear and shoulder as he reached into the fridge for the butter. "How's he handling the jetlag?"

"Jetlag?" Gumshoe sounded honestly surprised. "I'd completely forgotten about that. Well, pal, he's a bit tired, but I think maybe that's from the case at the Embassy going as late as it did... and that was after staying up all night to clean up his office... and then there was the stuff at the place, with the thing, and of course what happened on the plane..."

It took some doing, but Phoenix eventually learned that Miles Edgeworth had spent a very busy four days since returning to the States, investigating multiple murders and escaping at least one kidnapper. He'd also been repeatedly accosted by Wendy Oldbag, an ordeal in itself. By Gumshoe's account Edgeworth had also charged into a burning building to rescue a thief and track down a teenage girl. Phoenix was reasonably certain the detective had gotten confused about _something_ in the telling, and probably – _hopefully – _been exaggerating about the burning building.

Phoenix ended his phone-call and stared blankly at the butter, warming gently on the counter. He'd been planning for months to bake something for Edgeworth when he returned to the States from his sabbatical in Europe. He'd had it all figured out – after discarding cream puffs, cheesecake, and black forest torte, he'd finally decided to make a layered cake with almonds, apricots filling, and buttercream frosting. He'd made the apricot filling yesterday. It'd been a while since he'd had a reason to do anything really fancy, and after Iris's trial, he was well aware just how much he owed the prosecutor. Besides, Edgeworth undoubtedly had enjoyed some very fine desserts and pastries in Europe, and it was worth reminding him that he could get those things in the States, too. The amount of time Edgeworth was spending in Europe had Phoenix worried that one of these days, his friend would chose to stay there for good.

But Phoenix was also reasonably certain that after the harrowing week he'd just had, Edgeworth wouldn't be up for appreciating the delicate subtleties of fine baked goods. As far as he knew, the prosecutor usually dined well, but on court days – and even at celebration dinners after major trials – Phoenix had noticed that he tended to eat simple, bland things.

Phoenix sighed and pressed his head against the kitchen wall, thinking hard. He could go ahead with the cake, but he didn't want to embarrass the man – or let the cake go to waste. But what could he do with a batch of what was essentially apricot pie filling, besides make a pie? That seemed just too... boring.

Beside him, the Steel Samurai and Pink Princess wished him a happy Valentine's day on the wall calendar Maya had gotten him last December. _ I don't know why she bothered, I always forget to turn pages on these, _Phoenix thought, flipping over to March. Today was the 16th – over half the month had gone by. He glanced over the days that had already passed- _looks like I missed National Frozen Foods Day and Dr. Seuss's birthday. Ash Wednesday, too – hope Edgeworth didn't give up sweets for Lent. _ Phoenix stopped himself and frowned. Was Edgeworth even Catholic? No, wait, the Catholics that gave up meat on Fridays, but the Lutherans and the rest gave up other things... wasn't it? Phoenix had never been very good with religious observances, not even his own. He glanced down the rest of the month, guiltily, looking for Passover, and signed with relief when he saw it wasn't even this month.

Purim sat innocently at the bottom of the box marking Thursday the 21st.

_Purim, huh? _

Oh, well, he could always make hamantashen... they weren't anything fancy, but that was fine. No, if Edgeworth had been kidnapped and running into burning buildings and so forth, they would be much, much better than a fancy cake. And it gave him a way to use the apricot filling, too.

It took only a few minutes to trade the cake flour for all-purpose and exchange other ingredients for the ones he needed. The butter he put back in the fridge before it started to melt – room temperature was one thing, but it was unseasonably warm for March. He closed his cookbook, shutting the layered cake recipe away with a bit of regret, but only a bit.

He had a Jewish cookbook (a Bar Mitzvoh gift from some aunt or other), but more useful than that was the dented box of index cards he'd inherited from his grandmother. He didn't bother to retrieve the recipe card for the hamantaschen, though – he'd learned the recipe by heart before he'd ever gotten a written copy.

Ten minutes later, the tip of Phoenix's tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth in concentration as he carefully leveled off the second cup of flour with the back of a knife. Flour drifted off the edge of the measuring cup and into the path of his rotating fan, faint particles dancing in the air currents, and his nose tingled warningly. He held his breath as he transferred the flour to his mixing bowl, and the urge to sneeze passed.

Sugar came next. The recipe card listed three-quarters of a cup, but it was Grandma's recipe, and that meant Phoenix didn't quite pour the glimmering crystals up to the top of the chewed plastic edge of his ¾ c measuring cup. He tapped the cup gently on the counter until the sugar leveled out. The glinting surface was just barely past the line he'd scratched inside marking 2/3 of a cup. _Eh, what the heck, Edgeworth could stand to be a little sweeter_, he decided, and so it was a level three-quarters cup of sugar that joined the flour in the bowl.

Phoenix reached for the flour sifter that wasn't there, and sighed. _You promised me you'd replace it_,_ Maya,_ he though with some irritation. _It's been three months already! _After some rummaging in his drawer, he found his whisk, and set it aside as he measured out baking powder (1 ½ tsp) and salt (¼ tsp).

_How does anyone confuse a flour sifter for a coffee grinder?_ Phoenix wondered, not for the first time, as he whisked together the dry ingredients, the whisk making soft _shhh _noises as it brushed against the rounded sides of the stainless-steel bowl. _And why did she think we needed ground coffee when we were making peach pie?_

Perhaps there were just some things man was not meant to understand; if that were the case, Phoenix was willing to wager that Maya's baking 'inspirations' were among them.

He retrieved the butter from the refrigerator – a little harder than he would've liked, but that would change soon enough. He unwrapped the full stick carefully, smiling a little at the pale, unmarred surface before he quartered it along the length, and shaved off small cubes into the mixing bowl. Grandma had used margarine, so she hadn't had to worry about melting points, but this was the one place where Phoenix insisted on deviating from her recipe. _Everything really is better with butter_, _even if it's kind of a pain to work with,_ he thought, working the small cubes into the flour mixture with his hands. He could always tell when he found a patch that needed work – it was colder and smoother than the rest of the mixture.

The day really was warm. Phoenix felt the softening of the butter between his finger tips and wondered if he'd have to chill the mixture before he'd finished working in all the butter. He _did_ put the bowl of crumbly almost-dough in the fridge when he'd finished, something he didn't normally bother to do at this stage.

It took some scrubbing before his butter-and-flour encrusted fingers were clean of grit and grease. He dried them on the rough cotton towel at his sink. With absent-minded ease he cracked an egg one handed on the side of a smaller mixing bowl, separating the halves of the shell with his thumb so the whites and yolk could fall freely into the bowl. After tossing the shell down the garbage disposal and giving his hands a rinse, he measured out two tablespoons of orange juice into the same bowl. Nostalgia took him for a moment as he beat the egg.

"Why are we putting orange juice into cookie dough?" a much younger Phoenix had asked his grandmother, confused and worried. "I thought we were making hamantaschen, I thought they were apricot hamantaschen, the filling we made is apricot, not orange..." He couldn't give Miles and Larry cookies that tasted like _breakfast juice_, not after they'd stuck up for him in front of the entire class.

Gertie Rothman smiled down at her grandson. "Don't worry, _bubbellah_, it's just a little bit. You remember what happened when we left the vanilla out of the chocolate-chip cookies, right?"

Phoenix made a face. "They tasted gross, like eating flour."

"Right. But when we make them the right way, they don't taste like vanilla, do they?"

"Hmm... not really." Phoenix bit his lip. "So it's like that?"

His grandmother nodded. "Right. Some people use vanilla or lemon juice for hamantaschen, instead. But I use orange juice because of my mother. When my family moved here to California from New York when I was a little girl, my mother was so excited that we had an orange tree in our yard that she used orange juice instead of lemon, whenever she baked."

Phoenix rubbed the back of his neck. He knew that in theory grandparents had parents, but even when he saw pictures it was hard to imagine his grandmother as a little girl.

"There, the egg's beaten. Now you stir it into the flour and butter until it becomes firm," his grandmother had instructed, adding the egg-and-juice to the bowl. Young Phoenix had struggled with the wooden spoon in the great metal mixing bowl, but it was an easier matter for his adult self.

Once the dough was well and truly dough, Phoenix covered the bowl with plastic wrap and placed it in the refrigerator to chill. He had to shove aside a half-finished container of cottage cheese (nasty stuff, but it made for good lasagna) and last night's leftover stir-fry to clear a space large enough for the mixing bowl in his tiny, ill-smelling refrigerator.

Phoenix washed his hands again for good measure, then set them on his hips as he looked at his kitchen counter. The cake pans he put away in the cabinet below the counter, and then had to take them out again when he remembered the rolling mat was somewhere in that cabinet. His kitchen cabinets were narrow but deep, and Phoenix had nearly all of his pans on the floor before he found his silicone rolling mat, shoved to the back along with his rolling pin.

_I really ought to get a new rolling pin one of these days,_ Phoenix thought as he looked doubtfully at his old wooden pin and its cracked red handles. Maybe a marble one. _Except in Maya's hands that would be a deadly weapon._ With a clatter, the rolling pin and mat landed on the counter; his collection of pots and pans were returned to their proper locations with an assortment of clangs.

The dough needed to chill a while longer, so Phoenix washed out his measuring cups and did a few other odd chores while he waited. Eventually, he decided the dough was chilled enough, so he retrieved the bowl from the fridge. Another trip to the fridge later, the dough was joined by the bowl of apricot filling. His counter was barely large enough for the mat, so he had to set the bowls in the sink. _When I'm rich and famous I'm getting a place with a decent-sized kitchen,_ he grumbled to himself as he unrolled the mat. With another grumble, he preheated the oven for 400F – it was going to make the kitchen uncomfortably warm, even with the fan on. He set a bowl of flour in one corner, and took a scant handful to dust the surface of the mat and rolling pin.

At least he didn't have to weigh down the corners of his rolling mat with cans, like his grandmother had. Her plastic mat, rolled loosely around her rolling pin when she wasn't using it, had a tendency to curl up from the edges unless you held it down. That made it hard for a nine-year-old sitting awkwardly on a stool to roll out hamantaschen. It was even harder for two nine-year-olds to roll out sugar cookies – Edgeworth's father had had the same sort of mat.

_Heh, Edgeworth really was shocked that I'd never made Christmas cookies before, _Phoenix thought as he tore a portion of dough from the bowl and rounded it into a ball. He rolled out the dough, taking another trip down memory lane.

They'd been playing with some small plastic action figures or other when Miles's dad knocked on the door.

"Who wants to make Christmas cookies?" Mr. Edgeworth asked, his bespectacled face peering around the door-frame.

Miles had jumped up immediately, dethroning the evil red-and-black plastic king as he did. "I do!"

Phoenix followed his friend a little more cautiously, his socks sliding on the unfamiliar wood floor. "So, how do we make Christmas cookies?" he asked as they scrubbed their hands in the kitchen sink together.

"You've _never_ made Christmas cookies?" Miles was so startled he forgot to take his hands out from under the faucet, even though they were free of soap. "But _everyone _makes Christmas cookies. You have to make Christmas cookies for Christmas!"

"I'm _Jewish_," Phoenix said, pushing Miles's hands out from under the flow of water so he could rinse his. It was a little annoying every time Miles was surprised by something like this. Phoenix wasn't even the only Jewish kid in their class. "_You_'ve never made latkes," he said crossly. "You _have_ to make latkes for Hanuka."

"Oh." Miles looked thoughtful. "Well, then, we can teach you. And you can teach us how to make latkes."

Phoenix nodded, mollified. "Okay. Although we missed Hanuka this year. So it will have to be next year."

"You only make them for Hanuka?"

Phoenix shrugged. "Pretty much. There's lots of foods you only eat for certain holidays."

"I guess Christmas cookies are like that, too, or else we wouldn't call them Christmas cookies." Miles dried his hands on a towel. "What are some other foods?"

"Well, there's latkes for Hanuka, like I said, matzoh for Passover, hamantaschen for Purim..."

"Hamantaschen?" Miles said the word slowly. "Hah-men-tah-shin. Those were the triangle cookies you gave Larry and me. I remember the strange name. So it was Purim then?"

Phoenix reddened. "No. Purim's in the Spring or something. They're just the best kind of cookie I know of."

"All right, then, boys, for phase one of cultural cuisine exchange, we'll need to get out the cookie sheets and rolling mat," Miles's father said, fetching a store-bought tube of sugar cookie dough from the fridge. "And flour, so the dough doesn't stick."

Phoenix stopped rolling and reminiscing to dust his rolling pin again, and check the thickness of his dough. The dough was spread out in a thin, even blob – about 1/8th of an inch thick – so Phoenix set aside his rolling pin. He tapped his round cookie cutter in the bowl of flour, and started marking out three-inch circles in the rolled dough, edges just barely touching as he tried to fit as many in as he could.

_I never did get to teach Edgeworth to make latkes, _he realized as he transferred the circles to a nonstick cookie sheet balanced precariously on the sink and the corner of the counter. (The stove-top was too warm for the buttery dough and he was out of counter space.) He placed a heaping teaspoon of apricot filling in the center of each circle, and brought up the edges of each to form a triangle. _And come to think of it, we've either been at odds, or in different countries, every Hanuka since we met up again. _He pinched the edges together to seal them, making sure to leave an opening at the center. _But, maybe this year... _The scraps of dough left on his mat he gathered up and balled up in his hand, taking another handful of dough from the bowl to make another ball to roll out.

The oven beeped, signaling that it was heated, before he'd finished rolling out the next batch. But his cookie sheets was all extra-large, and so he filled it before placing the cookies in the oven, stopping to re-flour his rolling pin and the mat several times. He started on the next sheet while the first set baked, humming the Steel Samurai theme absently. The recipe said the cookies should bake for twelve minutes, but his oven sometimes ran hot, so he looked in at ten. Golden-brown triangles sat in neat rows on his cookie sheet, the orange-gold filling bubbling thickly in their centers. _Perfect._

As the cookies cooled enough to be removed from the cookie sheets (and the sheets used for another batch), Phoenix piled them carefully into a towel-lined basket, setting aside the few with slightly-burned corners, and a couple that had turned out uneven. He didn't actually think Edgeworth would make derisive comments about the imperfections in a batch of homemade cookies, but it was a point of pride to Phoenix that his baked goods look as good as they tasted. And an even _slightly_ burned cookie was the last thing he wanted his friend to taste if Edgeworth really _had_ run into a burning building.

No, the prosecutor deserved perfection, after all he'd done for Phoenix, and after all he'd been through (Phoenix would _really _have to ask Gumshoe again about the kidnapping) and here, in the kitchen, was the one place Phoenix was damn certain he could deliver.

He was just about to put the last batch in the oven when inspiration struck. He dug through his cabinet until he found the large-crystal decorative sugar he sometimes used for muffins and two-crust pies. Phoenix shook out a teaspoon or so into the floury palm of one hand, and carefully pressed a pinch of the decorative sugar into the dough on each cookie.

Twelve minutes later, and allowing time to cool, Phoenix heaped the last of the hamantaschen but one into the basket, and covered it with another towel. The very last hamantasch was a little bit larger than the rest, uneven and lopsided. It was always hard to get the last of the dough rolled out in one final, even circle, so Phoenix never tried that hard, instead seeing the final cookie in the batch as the baker's treat.

Phoenix filled the dough bowl with water and put the leftover filling back in the fridge. Belatedly, he switched off the oven – why did he always forget to do that? By the time he'd changed into a shirt that wasn't dusted in flour, he judged the last batch cool enough to eat without burning the roof of his mouth on the filling. He took a bite of that last, misshapen hamantasch. Sweet, firm, buttery cookie and warm sticky, gooey apricot filling spilled into his mouth. He rolled his eyes appreciatively, holding the rest of the cookie between his teeth as he wrapped a plastic bag around the basket of cookies, to keep them from spilling out on the back of his bike.

A twenty-minute bike ride and long elevator ride (how did Edgeworth manage twelve flights of stairs every day?) later, Phoenix knocked on Edgeworth's door.

"Come in," the prosecutor's clipped tones were audible through the door.

Phoenix pushed it open. The office was just as pink as he remembered it, but unusually untidy – the desk was entirely covered by stacks of papers, except for one brown island of wood that was instead occupied by a teacup. Edgeworth looked up, lines of fatigue clear in his face. "I'm sorry, Wright, but I'm very busy right now. I haven't got much time for socializing."

"I know, Gumshoe warned me," Phoenix said easily, crossing the room so that he stood in front of the desk. "I just wanted to bring you these." He folded back the towel on top of the basket to reveal the fruits of his labor.

"Cookies?" Edgeworth blinked, and set down his pen. His eyebrows pinched together in question. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but whatever for?"

"Yes, cookies. Still warm from the oven." Phoenix offered the basket to his friend rather than set it on the desk and disrupt whatever system of organization the prosecutor had going. "They're to welcome you back home."

The prosecutor took a cookie from the top of the heap – one that Phoenix had decorated with extra sugar – and looked it over carefully.

"It's apricot filling," Phoenix explained, in case uncertainty was Edgeworth's reason for caution.

"Ah," the prosecutor replied, and took a bite. Phoenix watched his face carefully, and grinned as he saw the prosecutor's eyes widen, and the corners of his mouth turn up slightly.

Phoenix was therefore quite surprised when the prosecutor used his free hand to open a drawer in his desk and look at something inside. Edgeworth closed the drawer and looked back up a moment later, smiling slightly, his eyes darting to the side. "This is very good, Wright," he said, and turned his gaze directly on the defense attorney, smirking slightly. "And it's even the appropriate time of year."

"Time of year?" Phoenix blinked.

"These are hamantaschen, yes?" Edgeworth asked, gesturing with the cookie. "And I note that Purim is next week." He took another bite, fastidiously catching any crumbs with his hand.

It took Phoenix a moment to realize the significance of his friend's comment. "You remembered?" he asked, tentatively.

Edgeworth snorted and finished the cookie. "Yes," he allowed, reaching for another. "I remember." He ducked his head slightly, his eyes darting away as they did, even now, when the prosecutor spoke of something personal. "You said... they were the best cookie you knew of."

Phoenix rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. "I didn't know many kinds of cookies back then, I've learned to make much fancier things, but... yeah."

"And you made these yourself?" Edgeworth asked, inspecting another cookie. "To... welcome me back to Los Angeles?"

"Um, yeah. Basically."

"Then I am inclined to agree," Edgeworth informed him, and relieved him of the basket.

Phoenix's hamantaschen recipe is also mine, and like his it comes from Grandma. It uses orange juice, too, although I don't know why. Like Phoenix, I like making them at times other than Purim, and I like apricot filling best (poppyseed is traditional, but apricot, strawberry, raspberry, and prune are also all fairly typical). Sadly, I am not l33t enough in the kitchen to make my own filling, so I just buy the filling in a can. I guess jam might work in a pinch, too.

I did my best to make the recipe recoverable from the narration, but just in case, I thought I'd include it here. Vegans and lactose intolerant folks may use margarine instead of butter, but the rest of you, trust me, butter is better.

Phoenix's Grandma's Hamantaschen Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

3/4 cup sugar (or a tad less - but more than 2/3 cup)

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup (one stick) butter

one egg

2 TBSP orange juice

pastry filling in the flavor of your choice

Sift together dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Cube the butter and work it into the flour mixture with your fingertips.

Beat the egg with the orange juice, and stir in to the mixture to create a firm dough. Chill well.

Preheat oven to 400F. Roll dough on lightly floured board, 1/8-inch thick. Cut out 3-inch rounds (slightly smaller is fine) using a cookie-cutter or upended glass.

Put a heaping teaspoon of filling in the center of each round. Bring the edges together to form a triangle, pinching them to seal. Leave a small opening in the center or at each corner.

Bake on greased or nonstick baking sheet in a hot oven (400 degrees) about 12 minutes, until golden brown. Makes about 2 dozen, depending on size.


End file.
